Instead the claims from Olmert that he interrupted Bush in the middle of a lecture and ordered him to stop Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from voting in favor of a ceasefire resolution she had helped to draft and rally support for has drawn a harsh rebuke from State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

On the one hand, the US abstention stunned a lot of people who assumed Rice would vote in favor of the resolution after spending several days shoring up international support for it. Yet Olmert’s version of the story, which his spokesman today said he was standing behind, does contain at least one significant hole: the lecture he allegedly called during finished uninterrupted, President Bush never left the podium in mid-speech.